


I Do

by pir8fancier



Series: Do I or Don't I? [9]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-26 10:31:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3847600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pir8fancier/pseuds/pir8fancier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Final installment of the Do I or Don't I series. Rodney gets cleared to have sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Do

**Author's Note:**

> No beta. See any mistakes, give me a holler.

Rodney has a check-up with Tasha that afternoon, so John prepares himself for hours of grousing that are sure to constitute their entire evening (and possibly the next six evenings). There are a number of things that Rodney does really well and hating is one of them. Most of the time John gets it. Kavanaugh? Man, that guy was a tool. He deserved all of Rodney’s scorn and then some. And Chaya? Well, yeah, he got that, too. But Rodney’s visceral dislike of Natasha Kim stymies him.

John is usually pretty good at sussing out people. He might be abysmal at having any insight into his own emotional circuitry, but he is pretty damn adept at reading other people’s. It certainly explains why he’s still alive, despite the best efforts of the Pegasus Galaxy to the contrary. He doesn’t approach situations with the same grace or finesse as, say, an Elizabeth or a Teyla, but he’s a kick-ass poker player, and the same skill set one brings to a hand of five-card stud is pretty much the same skill set you need when negotiating with the Genii. Working the stats and counting cards only takes you so far. Poker is half math and half reading people. Figuring out their physical and emotional tells and then doing the math. What makes him such a good player is that he can read people, but because John is such an emotional fucktard, people can’t read him. Play poker with John Sheppard and expect to lose a bunch of change.

Rodney is an abysmal poker player. When he is holding a flush, he sticks the tip of his tongue out the side of his mouth. A pair causes one eyebrow to raise up. A straight and his nostrils flare. His losses confuse him because Rodney views poker as being purely mathematical, and the stats dictate that he should win at least 25% of the time. Rodney’s faith in math is so endearing that John lets him win a few hands now and then.

John tried to explain to him one night—after a particularly grueling loss that meant that John’s beer tab was covered for the rest of his natural born days—that the term poker face means exactly that: you don’t reveal your hand through your facial expressions and/or body language. Rodney had replied, “I keep my face absolutely still.”

John felt like raising one eyebrow to make his point, but he didn’t. “Yeah, except that thing you do with your left eyebrow when you have pair.”

“What thing with my eyebrow?”

John then had to explain the eyebrow thing, and the next time they played poker Rodney had scrunched his eyebrows in such a tortured configuration in an effort to not raise his left eyebrow that it had been just as revealing as the single raised eyebrow. And John won. Again.

So, yeah, John is good at reading people but this business with Tasha Kim and Rodney has him stumped. It’s beyond the general all-purpose scorn that he normally reserves for all doctors. John figures that Rodney’s hatred of Natasha Kim is partly jealousy. With her joint M.D. and PhD in mechanical engineering—she and Rodney had the same PhD advisor—now there was someone on base with academic credentials to rival his. He can disparage her medical degree, as he has with all other M.D.’s within a five-bazillion-mile radius, but engineering is sacrosanct in Rodney’s eyes, even as he insists that his former advisor must have been in the final stages of senile dementia to award this woman a PhD.

And there’s his raging hypochondria and very real allergy issues, which, combined with his fear and scorn of doctors is, obviously, inherently problematic.

And even though John knows that although they are solid as a couple, the specter of Jennifer Keller haunts sick bay. Rodney’s guilt over the collapse of that relationship is on-going. John has accepted that it’s separate from how Rodney feels about John. This had been Rodney’s last chance to be the geek who had nabbed the gorgeous blonde and be, well, normal. John understands that yearning to be normal. It took three years of living in a Virginia suburb to hammer home that John can’t do normal either, and the most stand-up thing he could do would be to divorce Nancy and let her find someone who doesn’t get nauseated at the sight of a mall. The reality that Rodney had ended the relationship because leaving Atlantis was a total deal breaker doesn’t mitigate the guilt. John still feels majorly guilty over Nancy and he always will. Truth might set you free physically, it doesn’t necessarily set you free emotionally.

Basically, there’s a lot of foundation for Rodney’s dislike but it doesn’t explain all of it. Eventually John figures Rodney will do the emotional equivalent of the raised eyebrow or the nostril flair, and John will get a handle on what’s going on; until then he just tries to mitigate the worst of it.

They meet up at the mess for dinner like they always do. John had spent much of the afternoon devising comebacks for Rodney’s irrational complaints, but it didn’t matter. No harangue. They sit down. No screed. John pushes his now non-fat chocolate pudding in Rodney’s direction and it’s ignored. In fact, Rodney doesn’t even finish his dinner, even though it’s meat loaf night. He won’t make eye contact with John, always a bad sign, but what’s even worse is that Rodney is basically on “mute.” If Rodney were a machine and you pushed a button to “start” him up, the button labeled “outrage” would have faded letters, almost all of the type wiped away from being pushed so much. The “mute” button would be pristine, like the day the “Rodney” machine was taken out of the box. John begins to panic as talk around the table is mostly about John’s potentially successful push to bring back Woolsey. Rodney barely reacts when John mentions that O’Neill is now onboard with getting Woolsey back on base.

“Oh. Great,” is all that Rodney says, with about as much enthusiasm as if Rodney had been told he was now obligated to attend two yoga classes a day.

By the time they’ve dumped their trays on the bussing station, John is trying to keep the panic at bay. Because what happened at that check-up that Rodney’s isn’t telling him about?

Rodney makes some vague comments about needing to go back to the lab for a few hours, but it’s with none of his usual enthusiasm. John watches him shuffle down the hall with a pensive look on his face. John places the flat of his hand against the wall, hoping Atlantis will give him some feedback, but she feels normal, even chirpy, and very excited at the thought of Woolsey returning. She loathes the bozo currently in charge, and it’s only through John’s repeated requests for restraint that this guy’s still alive. Rodney’s murmurings about Hal and Atlantis being little more than a reboot of 2001, a Space Odyssey aren’t that far off the mark.

She’s not worried about Rodney and that makes him feel marginally better. Then what in the hell is going on? Has Rodney’s recent health issues finally made him realize that he was nothing more than bi-curious, and now that that curiosity has been sated, it’s time to return to the sexual land of blondes with big tits? John heads out to the pier to think. It’s a cold night and the fog has moved in, leaving her decks cold and damp. He doesn’t sit. He stands and listens to the comforting sound of the water lapping against the city. Could he deal with this? Could he handle returning to only being Rodney’s best friend and nothing more? He doesn’t know. All he knows is that Atlantis is home, and he can’t leave no matter what comes down. Atlantis does the equivalent of ruffling a sentient hand through his hair, chiding him for his fears. He goes to the range and shoots at targets for a while, long enough at least so that he hopes that Rodney will be asleep by the time John decides to call it a night.

John checks the lab before heading to their quarters, and the only lights on are those of the computers blinking away. The door to their quarters slides back without a sound, and John glides into their room on silent feet. Rodney’s in bed but not asleep. He’s lost that snore he’d had before the heart attack, but it’s been replaced by a faint whistle. John doesn’t hear a thing, which means Rodney is awake.

“Hey, you just get into bed?” He doesn’t turn on the lights as he begins to undress, folding his clothes and placing them in a precise order so that he can jump into them in case of an emergency.

“A while ago. You’ve been at the range? You smell of cordite.”

Rodney’s voice sounds so small. Something is definitely wrong.

“Yeah, I needed a few more hours for this month.” Which is a total lie, because John always exceeds his mandatory hours at the range by something like 400% every month. Which Rodney knows. “Let me take a quick shower and—”

“No, don’t.”

John doesn’t know if that’s a “don’t because I want you in bed” or a “don’t because it doesn’t matter because your gay-reeking-of-cordite ass will not be gracing my bed in the future.” John climbs into bed, and from the faint moonlight coming in through the window he can’t help but notice that Rodney’s body is hanging off the edge of the bed on his side. John sends a bitter message to Atlantis, _See, I was right_.

John dials up the well of fortitude that he reserves for special moments, like when he’s about to ride a nuclear weapon kind of moment, and waits. They lie there for a good hour, neither of them saying anything, but neither of them falling asleep. The adrenaline in John’s system is by now on “red alert,” and if Rodney doesn’t say something soon, John is going to have to go for a midnight run because he is this close to exploding from all the unspent juice.

Finally, Rodney says something. At Rodney’s tentative, “Um,” John grabs on to the sheet with both hands to physically anchor himself.

“I… I saw that Dr. Kim today.”

John waits a few beats. When Rodney doesn’t follow-up with anything else, John prods him. “Yeah?”

“I’m doing really well.”

John ignores the smug little _Told you_ so from Atlantis and is dying to grab Rodney and touch foreheads, but although John didn’t think it was possible, Rodney scoots even farther off the side of the bed.

“Great,” John manages to say. And then waits for the bombshell.

“And?”

John waits for about thirty seconds and then prods Rodney again. “And?”

“Look, she says that I, I mean we, can now have sex. Tame sex at first, of course. But there’s no reason not to ramp it up fairly soon, except it’s pretty obvious that you don’t want to have sex with me anymore and I understand. Well, no, I don’t understand because I thought that… Actually, I don’t know what I thought because it seemed to me that… Anyway, I’m not sure that I can live with you and be celibate with you. I know that you still have, well, urges, because, um, it’s really hard to execute a hand job with a person lying next to you and that person not knowing, even if they’ve just had open heart surgery. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have, because jerking off is synonymous with breathing as far as I am concerned. So clearly it is me that’s the issue. I’ll move out because I couldn’t possibly live with you and not want to—"

John puts his hand over Rodney mouth to stop the raging insecurity threatening to suffocate them. He stifles an “oomph” as all that adrenaline surges and then disappears. “You are an idiot,” is all he says.

He starts by kissing the scar on Rodney’s chest. It’s not as prominent as some of John’s scars, given Rodney’s chest had been sewn up by one of the world’s best heart surgeon. As scars go it’s piddly-ass. John kisses it with a gentleness and reverence because he loves this scar. Because it represents life and hope and another thirty years arguing about Batman and Superman and chess games and rounds of poker and cars on the piers and all of the minute and not-so-minute things that make up this insane relationship.

Rodney tries to hide it, but he starts crying when John begins kisses his scar. John can feel Rodney tense up and fight to keep the tears inside. John doesn’t stop though until he’s kissed the length of it. Then he moves onto Rodney’s cheeks, which are wet from his tears, and kisses those too. Rodney reaches for John, and John drags him close, so close that there is nothing between them but John’s chest hair. They entwine their legs and wrap their arms around each other, their dicks smashed against their stomachs. John nibbles on Rodney’s ear and so slowly makes his way to Rodney’s wonderful mouth.

Up until this point, John has been in charge, but John gives it up to revel in Rodney’s kissing. John isn’t a slouch at kissing himself, but Rodney could get a PhD in kissing. He teases, he does this little biting thing that sends John crazy, he knows when to tongue and when to mouth, and when to pull back and start over again to ramp it up even higher. John once speculated that he could come from just kissing Rodney, and tonight might have proved it if Rodney hadn’t winnowed a hand between them.

Rodney has big capable hands, with broad palms and large fingers. How many times in the last decade has John see those hands work miracles, whether it was with a screwdriver or a keyboard? Rodney takes both of them in his hand and began to jerk them off together, slowly and gently, because they are doing this dry without lube, as Rodney is too impatient to do anything but spit in his palm.

John knows that Rodney needs to be in charge. To take back his life from the floor of that fucking airport. That this is as much a mental as a physical watershed and so John lets go. Where ever Rodney wants to take them, John will follow. They haven’t stopped kissing but it’s beginning to lose that delicious rhythm as they get closer and closer. John’s stealth hand jobs have given him a lot more stamina than Rodney, but Rodney is determined to hold on until John is ready. The room fills with the smell of sweat and maleness, and Rodney can’t hold on and comes with a grunt. That wonderful primal sound sends John over, and they pant into each other’s mouth as they come down from their sexual high; the sweat covering their bodies slowly cools them down.

John reaches up to brush the hair away from Rodney’s damp forehead. At least what little is left of it these days. Rodney’s definitely going bald. But then John has a secret jones for bald men so it works out.

“Okay?” he whispers.

Rodney starts laughing. It’s such a joyous sound that John can’t help but join in.

******************************

They are back in Washington. D.C. for the annual budget meeting. They do not fly into Dulles for obvious reasons, but most airports these days look the same, and by the time they land, Rodney is nearly jumping out of his skin from anxiety. John isn’t far behind; he’s just better at hiding it.

Because they’d nearly lost Rodney the previous year, the brass decide to give him all he wants and more for the upcoming fiscal year. This doesn’t mollify him, and, in fact, it enrages him. The entire cab ride to the airport is a rant on how science should be driving the budget, not a pity party in response to his near fatal heart attack. The closer they get to the airport, the tighter Rodney is gripping the handle of his laptop. Not for the first time on this trip, John curses himself for not pushing harder for permission to fly a jumper here.

Their clearances get them waived through all lines, and they are at their gate with plenty of time to spare.

“Do you want a drink? I’m down a pound so I think I can safely have a beer.” Rodney gestures to the Ronald-Reagan themed bar near their gate. Rodney is five pounds shy of his college weight, and his blood pressure is better than John’s these days.

“Sure.”

They sit in the windowless bar and nibble on bar mix and sip their drinks. John bumps Rodney’s knee, who bumps him back, and despite his anxiety, gives John that slanted smile that is _so_ Rodney. It only lasts a second before returning to a grimace of apprehension. John can’t help but remember that awful day, feeling Rodney’s ribs give way in response to the pressure of John’s palms as he pressed on Rodney’s chest. The jerk of Rodney’s body in response to the electric charge of the paddles. That weeny with the iPad refusing to let John into the CCU. John calling McNeill, being reduced to begging O’Neill to pull whatever strings he could to get John in that room, because John had to be the first person Rodney saw when he woke up. If he woke up.

“What’s the matter?” Rodney asks and points at John’s fists. Which are now curled up into tight balls.

He never wants to be on the other side of that door again.

“Let’s get married.”

Rodney blinks. “Wanting to get married to me causes you to want to punch someone? Because that’s what it looks like.”

John unfurls his fists.

“No, I don’t want to punch anyone. Well, yeah, I do, actually. You have a problem with getting married to me?”

Rodney rolls his eyes in scorn, which makes John feel a million times better.

“Of course not, but what brought this on? We’re basically married for all intents and purposes. Why make it official?”

John had made a secret vow when he’d signed his divorce papers that he would never get married again. That he isn’t the marrying kind. That all the traditional expectations most everyone has of marriage don’t apply to him. And it still doesn’t. But what in this relationship was traditional? And what John hadn’t realized then, as he did now, is that marriage isn’t just an emotional thing where you make vows in front of a bunch of people, and then spend the next five days opening presents and writing thank you notes. It is a legal thing. Marriage confers basic rights that no other institution does.

John isn’t much for institutions, although Rodney would have rightly pointed out that there isn’t anything on the face of this Earth that isn’t more institutional than the U.S. Armed Forces. And he would be right. John has never denied the schizophrenic part of him that hates stupid rules and regulations but loves the concept of duty and honor, and he has been willing to ignore all the bullshit for the honor of serving his country. It is a compromise he’s willing to make. The wheat with the chaff kind of deal.

Marriage, the Reboot? Well, he doesn’t think that Rodney will care that their wedding china is shy dinner plates. He is damn sure that he and Rodney are so solid that thirty years down the road, heart willing, they’d be making this trip yet again, with Rodney still bitching about the budget. And, if by chance it’s John’s turn to have a heart attack, he wants Rodney to have the legal muscle to be in that room, so that the first person he sees when he wakes up is Rodney.

“Because I don’t want some asshole keeping me out of your hospital room ever again. I don’t want some asshole keeping _you_ out of _my_ hospital room should that come down. I don’t want to ever call O’Neill again to beg him to pull strings just because you and I aren’t legal. We both know that being married doesn’t mean that we stay together. We do or we don’t. But what it does do is make us legitimate in the eyes of the law, so I have the right to tell some jerk with an iPad to fuck off. There might be some blowback from the brass because—”

“Please,” Rodney snorts. “We both know that the only way we’re leaving Atlantis is feet first. I shudder to think what she might do if they bounce us out of there because some homophobic general wants to can you from your job. Best case scenario is that she’ll probably sink again, and no amount of computer code will work to make her rise. Worst case? She’ll start firing nuclear missiles at Washington. I can’t believe they’d be that stupid. Well, they could be that stupid, but I honestly don’t think it will happen. So, okay. Let’s do it.”

“Rodney, I don’t want to do the rings and reception thing and the—"

“Oh, God, no,” Rodney shudders. “Something tiny. Just at City Hall. With Jeannie, Mads, that new baby, who she had the nerve to name Meredith—I will never forgive her—and Caleb, I suppose we have to invite him. Ronon and Teyla and her brood. Does that work?”

“Not formal,” John insists.

“What about Radek? And we have to have Miko and Simpson. And Lorne. We have to have Lorne. He’ll want to bring Parrish. What about Cadman?”

It began to get more involved by the second. But maybe it would be okay. All the old Atlantis crew.

“And Tasha. You can’t invite Radek without Tasha,” John points out.

Rodney begins to pout.

“Why do you dislike her so much?”

“Part of it is that she’s so smug.”

John coughs out, “Pot, kettle.”

“I know that,” Rodney grouses. “But every time I see her it hits home that I’m damaged. That I almost died. I resent that I have to see her, period. It’s a constant reminder. Plus, she just so irritating, with that inscrutable—”

“Rodney,” John warns.

“For a doctor, she’s really smart,” Rodney concedes. “Even better than Carson, although I will deny ever saying that.”

“So we invite her.”

“If you insist.”

******************************

Although they had specified no gifts, there is a wrapped package on Rodney’s desk when they get back from the city. They are happy and tired, but in the best possible way. It has been a great day.

Rodney shakes the box, and it makes a funny rattling sound. “Do you think I should scan it?”

“Nah. That will spoil the surprise.”

Rodney is like a kid, ripping the ribbon and paper off in a haphazard frenzy. The grin on Rodney’s face is so wide that it isn’t even slanted. “From Natasha Kim,” he crows as he holds up a bag of Cheetos.

******************************

The End


End file.
